Oliver Jeffers will celebrate the 20th anniversary of his debut picture book How to Catch a Star with a new installment in the adventures of his Boy and Penguin characters. Where to Hide a Star includes both the introduction of a new character, and a reunion of the old. The book is scheduled for publication on October 8 from Penguin Young Readers imprint Philomel Books.
“I always said I would never make another Boy and the Penguin book,” Jeffers said in a statement. “Unless the right idea came along. And after many years, it did.”
Following How to Catch a Star in 2004, Jeffers wrote Lost and Found (2005), The Way Back Home (2008), and three other picture books within the same universe. Lost and Found earned the Nestle Children’s Book Prize Gold Award in the U.K. and was adapted into a film.
Since then, Jeffers moved on from the series to release a number of picture books including The Incredible Book Eating Boy, and collaborations such as Imaginary Fred with Eoin Colfer and The Day the Crayons Quit and its follow-up books with Drew Daywalt. Jeffers has more than 12 million books in print in the U.S., and his works have been translated in 49 languages.
Where to Hide a Star is Jeffers’s third project out this year. Crayons Love Our Planet, written by Daywalt was released earlier this month, and The Dictionary Story, in collaboration with Sam Winston, is due out from Candlewick in August.
Penguin will rerelease all four of the previous books in the Boy series with new covers.
Jeffers said, “To be able to continue the momentum of this old familiar world into new territory felt exciting enough to remind me of the time I made How to Catch a Star 20 years ago, and hopefully a whole new generation of kids will share that excitement.”
